TODAY IN BASEBALL TAKES US BACK TO CHICAGO, ILLINOIS ON APRIL 2, 1908. On this date, Major League Baseball owners declared the game was invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York in 1839. A commission came to this conclusion after studying the issue for two years. It was overwhelming, and false.
Doubleday, a civil war General, and Cooperstown, named for poet James Fenimore Cooper, had as much to do with inventing baseball as Babe Ruth had with inventing the hot dog. No matter, a man named Spalding was on a mission – he would later go on to build a sporting goods empire. Cooperstown would become a baseball mecca.
In 1905 Albert Spalding recommended that former National League President A.G. Mills head up a commission to study the origins of the baseball. Someone uncovered a letter describing Doubleday as being the first to set down “base ball” rules derived from a game called “town ball.” A myth was born, except the rules weren’t new, neither was “base ball” (see September 23, 1845).
This much apparently is true, Abner Doubleday once lived in Cooperstown. And the myth Spalding helped create was strong enough to make this sleepy town in the hills of western New York named after a poet, the site for the Baseball Hall of Fame in the 1930s.
Contributing Sources:
Spaldings World Tour, by Mark Lamster, 2006, Published by Public Affairs
Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) www.sabr.org